View full sizeUnknownTrue, a six-year prison sentence is awfully long for touching a girl's bottom or hugging a boy too close.

But the Oregon Supreme Court got it wrong last week, in a rare 4-3 ruling, when it declared such a sentence "unconstitutional" in some cases. The court's dissenting judges got it right: Oregon voters approved tough mandatory minimums for a reason, and it is more appropriate for voters or lawmakers to fix problems with the law than for judges to sweep in and change the rules.

This standard may be particularly true for cases involving child sex abuse, wrote Chief Justice Paul De Muniz for the dissent. Judges might prefer to have more discretion, he wrote, but it's perfectly reasonable -- and constitutional -- for the public to embrace a "zero-tolerance" policy about certain offenses.

"In my view, that is precisely what the (L)egislature has chosen to do here," he wrote, "and it is no office of ours to second-guess that choice."

The court's ruling stemmed from two child sex abuse cases. One involved Veronica Rodriguez, a woman convicted in 2005 of inappropriately touching a 13-year-old boy she met while working at the Hillsboro Boys & Girls Club. The other involved a man named Darryl Buck, who was sentenced in Linn County in 2006 for repeatedly touching the clothed bottom of a 13-year-old girl while on a camping trip.

The lower-court judges in both cases refused to impose the Measure 11 penalty of six years and three months, calling the sentence disproportionate to the crime. Instead, both judges relied on old state guidelines to give sentences that were less than a quarter of the required penalty.

Why? As the Linn County judge put it, a longer sentence in this case would "shock the moral sense" of any reasonable person and therefore be unconstitutional.

Four Supreme Court justices agreed. Three didn't.

I'm not going to hash out the merits of the cases, other than to say this: All seven justices agreed that Rodriguez and Buck were rightly convicted of touching children with sexual intent, based on the evidence and related circumstances.

Also, all seven judges agreed that the court should show significant deference to the Legislature and voters when it comes to sentencing laws. As the court said in its majority opinion, judges should not "roam freely through the criminal code, deciding which crimes are more or less serious than others."

Unfortunately, the majority decided to roam freely anyway. That left the dismayed dissenters to note all of the obvious problems about separation of powers and judicial consistency.

It remains unclear what the impact of this ruling will be. Some legal experts and court-watchers predict a narrow impact, giving judges a chance to push back in cases where prosecutors get carried away or the sentence truly doesn't fit the crime.

Others predict more litigation, and for good reason: Many offenders in child sex abuse cases have clean criminal records before they are caught. Many appear to be upstanding citizens who've served the community one way or the other.

Can't you just hear their lawyers and supporters arguing for reduced sentences (or better yet, community service) to fit their special, unique and misunderstood circumstances? Can't you hear the lawyers in other types of Measure 11 cases making arguments about disproportionate sentences?

Make no mistake, the courts do work better when judges can exercise some discretion. Measure 11 is indeed too blunt of an instrument. The state statutes regarding sex abuse may need further refinement to avoid treating minor sex offenses on par with major ones.

But these are mostly political issues, not constitutional ones. They're best resolved by voters and their elected lawmakers.